Charita Goshay: Religious squabbles in politics nothing new

Charita Goshay

Monday

Feb 27, 2012 at 12:01 AMFeb 27, 2012 at 11:47 PM

But wranglings over religion and presidential politics is hardly new, says Jay Case, an associate professor of history at Malone University in Canton, Ohio. “We can go back to the one of the earliest presidential elections, when Thomas Jefferson ran against the incumbent, John Adams, in 1800,” he said.

In recent weeks, the Obama Administration has come under fire for its health care policy’s affect on faith-based institutions.

But wranglings over religion and presidential politics is hardly new, says Jay Case, an associate professor of history at Malone University in Canton, Ohio.

“We can go back to the one of the earliest presidential elections, when Thomas Jefferson ran against the incumbent, John Adams, in 1800,” he said. “Many Protestants, such as evangelical Calvinists and Unitarians from New England, believed that religion was important for maintaining moral character and ethics in society, and they believed that Jefferson would sweep these characteristics away. Jefferson was a deist who was not particularly supportive of traditional Christianity.”

“There were some clashes among the Founding Fathers over the role that religion should play within the political realm,” said local presidential biographer and historian Rich McElroy. “It hasn’t died down, that’s for sure.”

McElroy said although Jefferson’s support of a separation between church and state isn’t in the Constitution, “it’s an implied separation of powers.”

More commonly, the political squabbling occurs among believers. Case noted that throughout history, some Protestants have viewed Catholicism as a threat to democracy.

“It was a major issue in 1928, when the Democrats nominated a Catholic, Al Smith, as their candidate for president,” he said. “And most people who are over 60 remember how JFK’s Catholicism was an issue.

“But I should also point out that the behavior of religious people in presidential elections is also a complex phenomenon and rarely clear-cut: Al Smith swept the evangelical Bible Belt states in 1928 but still lost the election because he didn’t win enough non-Bible Belt states; and JFK won most of the Bible Belt states in 1960, which helped give him the very narrow victory over Richard Nixon. So one can’t simply say that all conservative Protestants opposed these candidates because they were Catholic; many did just the opposite.”

CIVIL RELIGION

Almost all presidents, Case said, have embraced some form of faith, “And just about all have expressed some sincere form of civil religion, where they believe that God and the American nation are somehow linked together.”

Among the most devout, he nominates William McKinley, Rutherford B. Hayes and James Garfield –– who preached in Canton when he was a Church of Christ clergyman –– Woodrow Wilson, and Jimmy Carter.

“Ronald Reagan seemed to have sincere religious convictions, but he did not attend church very often as president,” Case said.

McElroy named Lincoln. “He wasn’t a church member of course, but he was a devout believer. Our own William McKinley was a dedicated Methodist, as was his mom, who wanted him to be a Methodist bishop.”

“Abraham Lincoln may be the most interesting,” Case said. “He did not attend church regularly and did not display common spiritual practices of the era or a conventional theology. However, his parents were Calvinist Baptists, and some aspects of this faith shaped him all his life: he believed very strongly that providence guided the events of American history and that he was a tool to be used by God in some mysterious way that he might not fully understand. This seemed to have given him a certain kind of religious humility.”

SAME GOD

Case said Lincoln understood that sincere Christians could be found on both sides of the Civil War.

“Thus, we have his famous phrase from his second inaugural address where he said, ‘Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes his aid against the other ... The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes.’

“This is really a remarkable statement, given that it took place in the midst of a bitter war when Americans were slaughtering one another, many of them fully believing that God was on their side,” he said. “We might do well to remember Lincoln’s words today to help us from getting blinded or carried away by the passion of our own political convictions.”

“Most presidents have kept things in perspective,” McElroy said. “We haven’t become a religious state like Iran or Saudi Arabia. I think we’ve maintained a healthy balance. But I don’t think an agnostic or atheist could be elected.”

Case said most American voters will most likely always consider a candidate’s religious beliefs. McElroy recalled when Theodore Roosevelt, a faithful Dutch Reform member, proposed removing ‘In God we trust’ from coins “that created a firestorm.”

“Even secular Americans can get anxious about candidates who use religious language in their politics, and that is a form of evaluating somebody by their religion,” Case said. “I don’t think this will ever really go away, despite the effort by some to argue that we need to somehow be neutral on religion, or to privatize religious faith.

“It won’t go away because one thing that politics naturally evokes, especially presidential politics, is an ethical vision for the nation. For many people, it is impossible to form an ethical vision for the nation without drawing from their religious convictions.”

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